The big day has arrived. Your pay-per -click (PPC) campaign is about to go live. Your platform is set, your bidding plans seem to be perfect. Oh how many hours and days were spent to finalise the target segments for this precious campaign? You press the button on the campaign. The gates are open, let the floods in………

What? Where are the hordes of hits you were prepared to tackle? The inflow is much, much, much lower then you expected. You cannot put your finger on what went wrong. You did everything right….or did ? Oh the misery – help!

This is what many of my clients go through. If you are also going through this phase of your PPC campaign, you most likely missed the most important aspect of your PPC campaign enigma: the advert copy. It may be just a small piece of text, but without great advert copy that attracts people to hit it, your PPC campaign will fail.

The effort you put into the management and other aspects of your campaign will not matter at all if the users are not clicking on you ad. In this case the frontend is where work needs to be done or else all the processes following it will freeze.

Your PPC ad copy cannot be prepared by pulling out the first thing that comes into your mind and typing it out on a keyboard. This is the attitude that most people use and thus fail. By doing this you end up telling consumers your story instead of bringing out an ad with content that they would want to click on.

When writing an ad copy the first step is always to know your target audience. The better you know them, their goals, their plights and what they desire out of your product; the more gripping and tempting your ad copy will be.

Again, planning and reworking through your much adored old ad campaign is bound to be a pain, but the results of this effort will almost straightway significantly increase your user-hit rate.

PPC copy dos and don’ts

Let’s go through a realistic set of expectations before you bring up a rejuvenated PPC copy that will make you a PPC rock star.

Firstly and most important never forget that PPC ads are not intended to ‘make the sale’. It is not realistic to think that you can persuade somebody with just 95 or so characters that your product is just going to rock their world. The landing page is supposed to do this job.

Thinking that PPC ads will sell product is the approach that most frustrated sellers are using. The purpose of the ad is just to get the click. It is going to lead the customer to information not provide it.

The answer to all your PPC ad copy dilemmas is these three words… enticing, intriguing and inspiring. These are the perfect phrases to start planning your ad around to attract people. And once you are done, you have to test the reception of your ads and fine tune them

Let’s start throwing around ideas to get the ideal ad

1. Ask a question

The brain’s natural response to a question, regardless of it being verbal or written, is to attempt to answer. This attempt usually garners an immediate interaction with the reader.

2. Solve a problem

The lure of a solved problem triggers an intuitive response from the brain to know the answer and it gets people to click on your ad.

3. Use statistics

Statistics represent authority and knowledge. The use of statistics for your ad will gain it respect. Using authentic statistics to garner trust, hereby inducing people to think that your ad is legitimate and consequently the clicks will increase.

Implementing these ideas may take a bit longer then you expected at first, but good ad copy will see a considerable rise in your click-through rates. And once you get a good understanding of these steps you will become apt at putting together creditable ads with good hit ratios in much less time.